NEWS FROM THE TOUR VANS
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Needing to move up at least one place in the FedEx Cup standings to reach the Tour Championship for the first time since 2019, Gary Woodland changed his golf ball for the BMW Championship. It worked out well.
Coming into St. Louis ranked No. 31 and just outside the cut line to advance to East Lake, Woodland swapped out his Titleist Pro V1 for the newly released Pro V1x Double Dot – the same ball that helped turn Cameron Young into one of the top five players in the world since he switched to it ahead of his maiden win last year in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Woodland was hoping for the same boost, and an opening 6-under 64 to share the first-round lead with four others at Bellerive Country Club was the start he was hoping to have in St. Louis en route to a T4 finish that comfortably moved him inside the top 30.
Woodland is having his best season since winning the U.S. Open in 2019. While still dealing with recovery from brain surgery to remove a benign lesion in 2023, Woodland won for the first time in seven years at the Houston Open this spring. He ranks atop the tour in clubhead speed, so the Pro V1x Double Dot can help him with lower launch and spin the way it’s worked for Young and LIV’s Bryson DeChambeau, who share similar swing-speed characteristics.
Gary Woodland’s switch to Titleist’s Pro V1x Double Dot ball coincided with a strong performance at Bellerive.
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After Woodland visited the Titleist Performance Center to test options to better control his spin and distance, Titleist’s director of tour validation and research, Fordie Pitts, told GolfWRX that the Double Dot is “allowing him to be more aggressive without overspinning it, and he doesn’t feel like he’s lost anything around the green compared to Pro V1.”
Woodland told GolfWRX in St. Louis – where he put the Double Dot in play for the first time – that he “loved the window it launched in.”
Ben Griffin hasn’t exactly followed up his breakout 2025 season as well as he’d have liked, with only a pair of third-place finishes at Doral and Colonial and a couple top-20 major finishes highlighting a year in which he had also missed six cuts. He came to Bellerive ranked 38th in the FedEx Cup standings and needing a big result to get back to East Lake, but his T47 finish didn’t help and cost him his place in the top six who get automatic spots on the Presidents Cup team right at the deadline. He’ll have to rely on Brandt Snedeker giving him a captain’s pick.
Griffin famously plays the Maxfli Tour X ball, so he’s not afraid of being unique. So it comes as no surprise that he’s now the only PGA Tour player to be using TaylorMade’s Qi4D Max driver, which he first put in play at the Wyndham Championship. He reportedly prefers the rounder Max shape that matches his Qi4D fairway woods.
Griffin ranks 111th on tour this season in strokes gained off the tee (-0.074) – a decline from 58th (+0.196) last season when he won three times. The ultra-forgiving and high-MOI construction of the Max model offered Griffin improved ball speed (182 mph) and lower launch while maintaining his spin rate.
Scott Michaux
